Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a competitive guy. As such, I hate being number two. When my guidance counselor told me that I was salutatorian, my first thought was, “Can you recalculate my GPA?”

I certainly don’t want to sound ungrateful to be in this position, but it’s in my nature always to desire the best. Eventually, after enduring several stages of denial, I finally accepted that I would not be number one in the class. Whether it was an epiphany or a mechanism to cope with my situation, I realized that numbers are relative.

Our high school career was dominated by numbers. The number of times Inez called down to Mr. Munn asking for attendance. The number of dollars we spent to fix the roof, and the number of buckets used to collect water from that same “fixed” roof. The number of times Kyle Dostal tried on some girl’s clothes. The number of clocks we bought for the failed senior prank. More significantly, class rank, GPA, test grades, SAT scores and final grades. And society makes them so important that it’s impossible to ignore them.

But human intelligence cannot be measured by the numbers on a transcript. Unfortunately, we tend to oversimplify complex things, including our brain. But we have the power to reverse this destructive process in the coming years. Already, there has been a movement to reform the grading system in the United States. While this is a long process, it is necessary. In the meantime, we can focus on a more manageable accomplishment: reducing our personal emphasis on numbers.

Next year in college, I can almost guarantee I will get a B, and possibly a C. After spending the first few hours figuring out how to tell my parents, I hope I will think back to this speech and remember that numbers only matter as much as we let them.

Even beyond college, numbers have a profound effect on our lives. Taxes are yet another example of often hated numbers that control much of our adulthood. Fortunately, we know how to calculate the hypotenuse of a triangle, so taxes should be a breeze.

The trend of basing success on numbers that has plagued us for years will not simply disappear. In fact, it may be magnified. The number of dollars in one’s bank account is a frequent measure of success. However, this only provides a single perspective into someone’s life, and often it is the incorrect one. Just as we say someone has a 4.0 grade point average with a 2400 SAT score, we say that someone makes six figures and drives two Ferraris. But these numbers mean nothing until we force them to mean something. We wouldn’t measure compassion or friendliness by a number, so why should we do it for intelligence or ability?

Don’t be defined by the numbers that society gives you. Pay no attention to what those numbers pretend to imply about you. And most importantly, don’t be just a Social Security number. Do something that can’t be measured by a simple nine-digit code.

Timothy Roberts is the salutatorian of the class of 2015. He will attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology.